I don't fear lies, but I fear deception...
I saw a movie recently (Blue Valentine, if you’re curious) and it got me thinking (that can be a good or bad thing, opinions vary) about the way a relationship can evolve and, possibly, devolve. I won’t go into the movie because I don’t want to be a spoiler whore and it’s not crucial to my overall question, which is this: What do most people fear about relationships? Is it that they won’t last? Is it that they will last? There are so many answers to that question that any possible dialogue on the matter will be drowned in a deluge of opinion, so I won’t speculate on the fears of others, I’ll stick to my own.
I have trust issues, I know that. It’s really hard for me to trust someone who isn’t family. And that’s not because my family is made up of members of the Justice League. We are a Costco family-pak of dysfunction that’s for sure…but we’re blood. We may tell little lies, we may mildly manipulate, and we may yell and scream. We hurt each other, in so many ways, but we don’t betray one another, not our own blood. There’s a trust there, I don’t know how to define it, and I don’t know how to replicate it with other people without my fear some how mucking it up.
I know how it happens, how it devolves, how you can justify it. Suddenly the things you admired in the other person, or envied, are reflected through a funhouse mirror and they become something you disdain or hold in contempt. Suddenly you hear a hesitation in their voice when they answer one of your questions, the slightest of hesitations. In that hesitation, you hear a truth being stifled, you’re convinced of it. But you can’t speak of it, to do so would require admitting that the faith you had is starting to wane. So you hold it in, try to suppress the blossoming seed of doubt by suffocating it. But it doesn’t go away, and where you once were buffeted by an unwavering sense of faith, where you once saw truth, you now see lies and all you can think is, “I want to take the blue pill!”
And this is the best as I can describe it, I don’t fear lies, but I fear deception. I’m not sure if I can articulate the difference between the two. I can only say with unwarranted certainty that there is a distinction. I don’t fear the flaws inherent in our humanity. Our frailty is what separates us from the divine. But I fear the weakness that can seep in through those cracks if we don’t tend to them. I know where my cracks are. I know what I’ve done to patch them up. But I’ll never truly know someone else’s, not unless they show me, and once they do, I have to trust that those cracks don’t lead to a deeper chasm.
What do you think F-list?